Tuesday, May 1, 2012

The hatred for Ayn Rand

Rand is hated in
philosophical circles because she is a pop-philosopher, her philosophy
is not well-founded, and her philosophy is centered around her, not
around its ideas. Rand is hated by everyone else because she was a
homophobe, scientifically illiterate, and annoying as hell to read:
Rand is consider a pop-philosopher in the most derogatory sense. While philosophy majors might scoff at Fight Club as pop-philosophy, it doesn't make any overt philosophical statements...
But Rand does. Objectivism, the philosophy of much of Reddit's ire, was first illustrated in the Fountainhead, but then it blossomed in Atlas Shrugged. In Shrugged, the climax of the book is a 60 page novella outlining the philosophy and its so-called axioms.
So, just from that we can understand that when one says, "Rand is
pop-philosophy" we mean something very different from other bemoaning of
philosophy. Schopenhauer said Hegel was a pop-philosopher, when Sagan
made Cosmos he was considered a pop-scientists. These are still
insults, but when we label Rand a pop-philosopher we mean it in the
sense that she removed herself from the realm of journals and
established peer-review systems.
This, is indeed, the big reason why we know that Rand's philosophy is
not well-founded without me even having to walk to my book shelf. As
far as I can tell, she didn't publish in major philosophy journals. She
didn't take criticism well. Her works existed in an echo-chamber, and
the only other voices that she would respond to were those that she let
in. Indeed, if you look at the organizations made to evangelize Rand,
they have fights and break ups all the time. Why? Because they're not
allowed to change their canon! The Canon is serious business for an objectivist. It includes all Rand's books, the [1] Ayn Rand Lexicon
(because, apparently, she needs her own dictionary), and many of the
writings by Leonard Peikoff, who is sort of the objectivist Vicar of
Rome.[2] (1)tl;dr: Major philosophers don't like Rand because she didn't interact with them, lest her ideological purity be tainted.
Most people who are lucky enough to think about philosophy too much, don't like Rand for a number of reasons:
She is a homophobe:
[3] > "[same-sex relations are] immoral, and more than that; if you want my really sincere opinion, it's disgusting."[4] (further source)
Objectivism also turns out to be surprisingly scientifically
illiterate. Many of her followers have said that general relativity and
quantum physics are bunk theories because their philosophies disagree
with it. [5] Rational Wiki does a great job listing these conflicts with the natural sciences.

Some Objectivists like David Harriman and Leonard Peikoff seem to
have a problem with modern physics, especially quantum mechanics due to
its probabilistic nature. The breakdown of classical mechanics-style
causality at the quantum level doesn't square with Rand's vision of
causality. This has led to declarations by Objectivists that modern
physics is "corrupted" or "tainted" by a "Kantian influence"

If the readers from DepthHub may excuse an outburst, what the flying fuck? Tainted by Kantian influence? ... sigh... who is John Galt?
Anyways, she even messes up the social sciences: reread Galt's speech, and go ask [6] /r/psychology if she got any of the concepts right: She didn't. Why? Well, according to [7] Clemson University's
Robert L. Campbell, Rand made a* "declaration that philosophy in no way
depends on psychological theories or findings."* Well, I say, and most
people agree, that is bullshit. The empirical evidence is highly in
favor of cognitive (along with biological) psychology. Her psychology is
Freudian and non-scientific.
And, finally, we get to her books. You said yourself:

I found the books a bit tedious...

Because they are! The characters are boring, and the rape-scenes are
awful. Galt, the Christ-figure of Shrugged, is the flattest character
in existence before Twilight's Bella, but at least one can make the
argument Bella is intended to be that way to get horny tweens to buy the
book. Galt is flat because, apparently, idealized figures in reality
are supposed to be flat. For you people who didn't take AP English in
high school, a flat character is some character that is a stereotype,
that doesn't change, and has no real growth. Thats why I say Galt didn't
have real growth: a perfect man can't grow, because he's already
perfect, which makes him a shitty character. Harry Potter, Frodo, Jason
Bourne, Neo-- all these characters had philosophical, spiritual, and
mental growth. Galt has none of that.(2)tl;dr: Her philosophy is bad, her books are bad, and she should feel bad (but hey, she's dead).
(side note: A lot of her hero characters are
engineers/architects/technicalpeople. This is Roark, Henry, Dagny, Galt,
and Francious. The hero of Anthem is a natural electrician. This might be why our hacker friend geohot might be interested in Rand).
Edit: Fixed some part I thought where bad. Added some more discussion
about flat characters. Extended Objectivism's scientific uncredentials.